Strong opinions, weakly held

Today’s Amazon MP3 store special is Ben Harper’s Diamonds on the Inside. For $1.99, you can download the album in MP3 format with no DRM. Here’s part of a customer review of the album that was written in March 2003:

First of all, this review will not address the actual MUSIC on this disc, which is up to Harper’s usual platinum standard of songwriting and musicianship.

No, this is intended to be a warning that this CD has been laced with copy-protect technology that prevents those who paid for it from making MP3s and whatnot. It also prevents you from even listening to the disc on a computer except by using an extremely low-quality proprietary player that limits the quality to just 48 kbps — about what you’d get from AM radio.